Period warm-up music, and the 1920s cinema-like decoration of the delightful Simpkins Lee Theatre at Lady Margaret Hall, gave the initial feeling that this might be a show rooted in the past. But in fact Helen Mosby and Alison Gomm’s stand-up set was bang up to date. Entitled Getting Away with It, the show consisted of a series of short, sharp sketches, with the duo nailing a whole series of contemporary issues. The subject of Oxford colleges chasing conference business came first, with a prospective client being shown round the very theatre in which we were sitting. “We can supply you with a ready-made audience if required,” chirruped the conference seller, “For instance, the audience you see before you comes as standard — a celebrity audience costs extra”.
This caused much laughter, and thus Mosby and Gomm got the audience eating out of their hands. We went on to meet two friends discussing the perils of blind dates (“He might not read The Guardian!”) and two bored, luvvie-type actresses recording an episode of The Archers in entirely fake Borsetshire accents. Mosby and Gomm are particularly strong on aggressive ladies with clipboards, carrying out surveys, and a distinctly middle-class pair of housewives comparing the levels of dirt in their homes went particularly well too. “But we have a whole family of mice, the children have given them all names”.
This most entertaining, well-delivered, show will be repeated on June 1 as part of this year’s Oxfringe festival.
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